IT is the Medicine

On managing change

Torrent is a 3000 crore group that has implemented an ERP software package
in the last two years. The processes are now fairly automated and the company is
compliant to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). After implementing an ERP
solution from SAP, we found that change management was a major challenge-
people had the legacy experience of doing things in a certain way. Now,
suddenly, it was a different work environment.

IT and Research

R&D plays a vital role in pharmaceutical companies. Supporting that is a
key task for the IT department. We have 200 plus instruments in our laboratory
and around 500 scientists work in the labs. These instruments generate a lot of
data while analyzing a particular molecule and its effects. After analysis, a
regulatory document is prepared, which is submitted in the form of a dossier to
regulatory authorities. Once we get the nod for them, we go ahead with drug
development. In the whole process, IT is playing a vital role in terms of data
management-handling the millions of terra bytes of information created.

On the challenges

IT also pays a vital role in security, which is our biggest challenge. Drug
discovery is a major endeavor and has to be protected. We need to have a defined
security policy-we are getting the BS777 certification.

On outsourcing

Our entire maintenance of infrastructure including WAN, LAN and hardware are
outsourced. In software, we have developed some critical internal systems like
CRM. The core design, again, is ours and we have outsourced only the
development.